English|Are Those Innovative Talent Management Practices Really Working?( 四 )


Furthermore, the feedback loop is a great retention tool for employers, as it provides more accurate insights of individual’s value to the organization, that enables the employer to give personal recognition to the individual and identify particular strengths from each individual for more agile internal mobility, talent allocation and team deployment. When it comes to promotion, there is no wonder how much more convincing it is when the decision is based on a well-rounded and unbiased review.
English|Are Those Innovative Talent Management Practices Really Working?
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Entrepreneurship As mentioned earlier, encouraging employees to have their own project is somehow risky for talent retention, as they will possibly leave as the project matures. However, this approach is highly aligned with the particular company value. It defines what kind of brand image you want to build and what kind of talent you want to attract.
1. Empowerment
Promoting entrepreneurship can range from supporting small innovative ideas to supporting independent businesses. Encouraging innovation is much more widely applied in tech companies, as a strategy to stay on top of disruptive ideas. They try to boost creative thinking by taking the inspiring design of the office space, installing entertainment facilities like kickers or hosting an internal hackathon on a regular manner…To step further, the company can also support employees to initiate their own projects. Google’s 20% time rule is a good example, which encourages the employees to spend 20% of their time at work, to work on other projects that they think will benefit the company.
When it comes to real empowerment of independent business, it requires a lot more dedication in policy support and even resource investment. The concept can be also found in so-called intrapreneurship programs, the employees can use their regular working hours to develop their own ideas into a real business. Due to the employees' industry background and domain expertise, the majority of the ideas are still related to the companies’ core business, so that in the end the projects can be easily spun in. However, there are also cases that intrapreneurial projects successfully spun off as an independent business and the company stays as a shareholder. Besides, some other companies prefer to empower entrepreneurship by actively being the first pilot partner or the first paid customer of employees’ privately developed solutions when applicable. Employees are motivated to do things they are truly interested in, employers can also benefit from the innovations created.
2. Ecosystem
Clearly, the trade-off of being an entrepreneurial organization is talent retention. The departure of skilled employees is already a loss, further high turnover will surely translate into the high cost. However, if we zoom out to look at a longer timeline, the whole picture might be a bit different.
First of all, as there are more and more success stories coming out of the same company, the entrepreneurial employer brand will be gradually established within the industry, and the company will attract like-minded talents more easily, which directly saves the cost for recruitment. Additionally, apart from the funding that is available from the internal investment vehicle, many early-stage VCs also like to deploy networks in entrepreneurial organizations, so the good startup projects can easily enjoy better resources of funding for development, thus better chance to grow fast and to succeed. Moreover, supported by the alumni program, there will be better communication of information and recourses, as well as generations of exited entrepreneurs reinvesting their money and experience back into the new startups within the exclusive ecosystem.
Then what it brings back to the organization, is not only the reputation to attract more talents, but also the opportunity for the high-quality deal flow of investment, as well as a network of potential unicorns. Now…how do you feel about the trade-off?

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